I Am Livia (14 page)

Tiberius Nero brought our horse and cart to a stop when we were miles away from Neapolis, in a forest glade. His cheek was twitching with nerves. I told him we had to decide on a destination, but without a word he jumped off the wagon seat and went walking off to disappear among the trees.

Rubria stared at me. I saw the question in her eyes, the same one I had asked: Where were we going?

We waited for a time for Tiberius Nero to come back.
When he did not return, I put the baby in Rubria’s arms and went into the woods to search for my husband. I found him leaning against a tree, one hand pressed to his eyes. “Tiberius?” I said softly.

He straightened and looked at me. I was relieved to see that at least he was not weeping. But he seemed absolutely spent. “It may be I’ve come to the end of my road,” he said. “Maybe rather than running away and being hunted down like a wild beast, I ought to think of dying like a soldier of Rome.”

Perhaps he was just succumbing to momentary despair. He had walked off to be alone and collect himself, and I had come after him and found him at his lowest ebb. But with the deaths of my father and mother still so fresh in my memory, I did not take his words as a mere expression of wretchedness.

“Do it then,” I said. “But don’t expect me to honor your memory or to teach your son to honor it. I assure you, we will remember you as a coward. And be very certain, we will not die with you. My son and I will survive.”

He stared at me in disbelief.

“Coward.” I spat the word at him.

“How dare you call me tha
t
?”

“Are you angry, Tiberius? Good. Perhaps you’re a man after all.”

He struck me across the mouth with the back of his hand. I went reeling from the blow and tasted blood in my mouth.

He had never hit me before. I had not expected that. And yet I had wanted to rouse his anger, and even this rage seemed better than talk of suicide.

His hands were knotted into fists. I could tell he was fighting to keep himself from hitting me again. I wiped blood from my lips. “The time may come to die with honor,” I said. “But it has not come yet.”

“Do you understand my position? I must flee, but I don’t even know where to flee to. Anywhere in Italy, Caesar’s men will hunt me down like a rat.”

“Mark Antony—”

“If I wanted to go to him, where would I go? I don’t even know where he is. In Egypt still? Egypt is far away.”

I thought for a few moments. Then I said, “Sicily is closer than Egypt.” Sicily was governed by Sextus Pompey, who had lately forged an alliance with Caesar. But the bond between the Claudians and Sextus’s family was ancient; there had been friendships and marriages going back many generations. “From what I hear, Sextus Pompey is a man who honors old ties.”

Tiberius saw where I was leading him. “I doubt Sextus would kill me or turn me over to Caesar.
Whether he would offer me any real help is another question.”

“He would shelter us, at least for a time, and he would not kill you,” I said.

My husband gazed at me with compunction. “Look at your lip.
Why in the world did you insult me that way?”

To rouse you,
I thought.
Because my son needs the protection of a father.
I would have taken many more blows if it would have helped us survive. “I was overwrought. Forgive me,” I said. “Shall we go to Sicily?”

He knotted his brow for a few moments. Then he let out a deep sigh and said, “Yes.”

It was not easy to get us aboard a ship bound for Sicily without being caught by Caesar’s forces. But Tiberius Nero managed it with the efficiency one would expect of a former praetor of Rome.
We arrived on the island and stayed in an inn so primitive it had dirt floors and a thatched roof. Sextus Pompey had no eagerness to see us, but after a month finally sent for us.

At the age of thirteen, Sextus had seen his father killed before his eyes. His family estate had been seized by his father’s enemies. Now in his mid-twenties, he had lived a brigand’s life for years. Yet with fellow Roman aristocrats, he behaved with honor.

“I would truly like to help you,” he said, seeming to speak more to me than to Tiberius Nero. “But allied as I am with Caesar, that’s rather awkward.” He told us, though, that he was willing to help us get to Mark Antony, who was now in Greece. Since this was the best offer Sextus was likely to make, Tiberius Nero accepted it.

Sextus had the sea, as well as Sicily, for his domain. Men called him the favorite of the god Neptune. He had made himself feared, but to me he looked sorrowful and lost. Maybe I looked lost to him too. On parting, he gave me a bleak, oddly tender smile, and bent and kissed my cheek.

My mother had said that Mark Antony had little eyes like a pig. Meeting him, I saw the aptness of her description. But despite that, his fleshy, florid face, dominated by a jutting chin, was handsome. He gave off a musky smell—sweat and wine and some strong masculine essence. Sprawled on a dining couch, wearing not a toga but a Greek chiton made of red silk, sipping from a gold wine cup decorated with rubies, he eyed my breasts.
When a serving girl came to refill his wine cup, he fondled her buttocks.

“How are you enjoying Athens, Drusilla?” he asked me.

I felt a burst of irritation, which I was careful to hide. Antony had kept Tiberius Nero and me waiting here in Athens for an audience with him—that was what this dinner was, an audience—for an incredible four months. And from the moment I met him, he insisted on calling me not “Livia” or “Livia Drusilla” but “Drusilla.” It was a completely pointless affront. No one ever called a woman by just her second name.

“Athens is just as beautiful as I expected it to be,” I said.

“Yes, we’ve been seeing the sights and having a pleasant time.” Tiberius Nero managed to sound as if he had not spent the last months consumed with anguish, in dread about his future. I never knew before that he was such a good actor.

“Any city would seem a fine place after Perusia,” Antony said, looking at me. “You were there during most of the siege, weren’t you?”

I nodded.

“You look as if you’ve recovered from the privations you suffered. My poor Fulvia never did.”

I had heard his wife had died of a fever not long after she and her children joined him in Greece. “I am so sorry—” I began.

“I know she meant well. But what a debacle that whole business was. How foolish, to stir up all that conflict with Caesar over the latifundia.” Antony shook his head. “It’s a shame no one informed me of what was happening in Italy.” His gaze shifted to Tiberius Nero. “I’ve often asked myself why you didn’t restrain Fulvia and Lucius. A prudent fellow like you, a praetor—how could you have gone along with that lunacy?”

“To be honest, I never doubted for a moment that they were taking orders from you,”
Tiberius Nero said.

“Taking orders from me?” Antony roared. “Are you insane?”

My stomach jumped. “My husband is only saying that this was the impression we got from Fulvia and Lucius,” I stammered.

Antony gave a contemptuous snort.

I did not believe he had not known about Fulvia and Lucius’s actions. Even if they had wanted to keep him in the dark, surely Caesar would have sent him messages of protest. No, Antony had let them try their luck against Caesar, and then left them both—and even his two small sons!—undefended in a city under siege.

What had kept him from relieving us in Perusia? I wondered. Prudence? The tentacles of his mistress, Cleopatra, the Egyptian queen, tying him to her side? Some other, unfathomable thing—perhaps pure sloth?

“Well, past is past.” Antony took a stuffed mushroom from his plate, studied it as if it might tell him something, then popped it into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “What are your plans now, Nero?”

“That rather depends on you,” my husband said. “Naturally, I hoped—”

Antony interrupted him. “I’ll be frank. My house here is going to be crawling with Caesar’s representatives soon. His sister’s husband must be seventy years old, and his health has taken a bad turn. She’s twenty-five and supposed to be a peach, and—well, now I’m a widower. So I may agree to marry her, if the old stick dies. It would be a good way to smooth things over. There’ll be a big wedding—maybe the little snake will agree to come here for that. Do you follow what I’m saying?”

Tiberius Nero nodded. “You are going to forge a new alliance with Caesar.”

“Exactly. And do you know whose face I don’t want Caesar and his friends seeing? Yours.
What will they associate you with? Perusia and all that stupid business with the latifundia. I don’t want them noticing you in my entourage.”

“I see,”
Tiberius Nero said.

Antony lay back on his dining couch and looked meditatively at the ceiling, which was decorated with paintings of pink cherubs. “Now, matters could change. You were a bad praetor, but you’re a good military man. I’m not throwing you to the dogs. Look, the Claudians have lots of ties to Sparta, don’t they? Aren’t there hordes of people there your grandfather or some relative or other once helped?”

“True. I have guest-friends in Sparta,”
Tiberius Nero said in a wintry voice.

“Well, that’s good.” Antony turned over on his side and flashed a boyish smile. “Sparta’s under my jurisdiction. Isn’t that convenien
t
? As long as you’re there, you don’t have to be scared of Caesar.
What I suggest is that you go to Sparta and tell your friends that you’ve come to call in some old debts.” He looked at me. “Drusilla, you’re going to love Sparta.”

We were quiet for a while, absorbing the fact that our immediate future lay in, of all places, Sparta. Then Tiberius Nero said, “About my property…”

“Your wha
t
?” Antony said.

“I understand that Caesar has seized all of my property in Italy.”

“Well, that’s a pity,” Antony said. “But you can’t expect me to do anything about that.”

I swallowed my anger and my sense of betrayal, and my husband did the same.
We were powerless.
What rankled most was that we had served Antony loyally and had suffered for his cause. That meant nothing to him.

Looking back now over the years, I remember how it felt to be helpless. I hated it. And whatever my failings, I can say I have never cast adrift someone who was loyal to me. I would never even treat a slave so.

After dinner ended, a high-ranking officer of Antony’s named Pomponius took Tiberius Nero and me aside. He had served with Tiberius Nero in Gaul. He advised us to go to Sparta and lead a quiet life, and not expect any aid from Antony, ever. “If information comes my way that can help you, I will write to you,” he said. “You can depend on my friendship.”